Datasets for Development Economists.
Post a comment if you know any information relevant to each dataset.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Democracy Indices

For comparison of different democracy indices, see Munck and Verkuilen (2002) "Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices," Comparative Political Studies, 35(1): 5-34. This is a very well-written survey.

Przeworski's website has links to what they call Democracy and Development Extended Data Set, covering 199 countries from 1946 to 2002. This should be overridden by the above updated dataset.

Their definition of democracy is clear-cut: (1) the executive is directly elected or indirectly elected via the legislature; (2) the legislature is directly elected; (3) there are more than one parties; (4) the executive power alternates between different parties under the same electoral rule. Cheibub, Gandhi, and Vreeland (2009) keep these component variables in the dataset so that researchers can look at the impact of, say, the presence of elected legislature.

This dataset appears to be an update of Carles Boix and Sebastian Rosato (2001) "A Complete Data Set of Political Regimes, 1800-1999", which in turn extends Przeworski et al. (2000) before 1950 to 1800 with one more qualification added to the definition of democracy (over 50 % of male population have the right to vote). See Boix (2003) for detail. Used by Persson and Tabellini (2006).

What is not ideal about this dataset is the unavailability of component variables and the documentation of judgment call cases.

4. Freedom House (also known as Gastil Index)
Years available: 1972-present
Downloadable here

This index provides information on civil liberties as well, unlike other measures of democracy.

Heavily criticised by Munck and Verkuilen (2002) (see above).

5. Vanhanen Polyarchy DatasetDownloadable at PRIO's website
Competition measured by the percentage of votes going to the largest party
Participation measured by voter turnout
Frequently criticised as a democracy index (see Munck and Verkuilen (2002), pp.16-7.

6. Papaioannou and Siourounis "Democratization and Growth"
The paper is downloadable at Papaioannou's website.

Provides the exact year of permanent democratization taking place (defined as the adoption of democratic constitutions after a long period of autocratic rule).